BROOKE GLADSTONE: Something remarkable in the news this week. The mainstream media have risen in a body to remark on the Bush administration's longstanding insinuation that Saddam Hussein was somehow involved in the 9/11 attacks -- an insinuation that according to a recent Washington Post poll 7 out of 10 Americans now believe. No, the president never said it explicitly, but 9/11 and Saddam have made regular appearances in the same sentence, as on May 1st when the president said "The terrorists and their supporters declared war on the United States and war is what they got." But then on Wednesday the president said this: [TAPE PLAYS]
GEORGE W. BUSH: "We've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with September 11th."
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Well you know what he meant. And Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice said much the same this week. Some political analysts believe it was damage control after Vice President Dick Cheney who didn't get the memo went on Meet the Press last Sunday still vaguely pointing fingers at Saddam. The president's corrective has led to a flood of coverage on all the networks and cable news stations, also all the major papers. But only one paper fact-checked Mr. Cheney after his chat with Tim Russert. (Of course Tim Russert didn't.) The Washington Post did. And the Washington Post reporter who seems to have spent the most time fact-checking the president on his justifications for war is Walter Pincus who's seen wars in Korea and Vietnam and has plugged away at the Post for decades. I asked him why the press has been so cautious with presidential pronouncements since 9/11.
WALTER PINCUS: There's been a sort of underlying fear that tomorrow somebody could roll a hand grenade in a shopping mall in Omaha and we'd be off again, so nobody wanted to make that kind of mistake or be out on a -- on that kind of limb.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: And you would agree that the press for the most part has restrained itself in fact-checking this administration!
WALTER PINCUS:There's a phenomena to this that's not unusual. I can remember back in the Reagan administration, the first two or three press conferences President Reagan had we used to regularly take what he said and, and show how he either didn't understand the subject or misstated it, and the public was outraged!--and didn't want to hear it. And I think that has had an impact over the years.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:As we read the papers and as we watch the television news programs on broadcast and cable, we see things that are notable by their absence and then notable by their sudden presence! We're suddenly seeing criticism and analysis that we haven't seen since 9/11! So what's changed?
WALTER PINCUS: Well I think part of what's changed is Iraq has changed the way people are looking at it, and I think slowly but surely it has come into people's mind to question why we're there. In the 1960s when Vietnam was on and what people forget is at a time when we're losing hundreds of soldiers a week, the public still was in favor of the war! It wasn't till less than a year before the war ended that the public at large turned around. There was, however, a very vocal center of opposition, both in the House and Senate who were regularly speaking out and could be quoted. You didn't have that here.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:So it really helps to have the Congress criticizing. It gives the press a little bit of cover and allows them to proceed in their investigations without perhaps attracting as much ire from the public that they might otherwise get.
WALTER PINCUS: I think to be honest there is that feeling, and to some degree the crusading which is what this used to be called has dropped out of favor. John Knight who used to run Knight newspapers ran an editorial of his own on the front page of every Sunday paper. Knight-Ridder now you, you don't know who the policymaker is except their concern is how much money they're making. And that's why in-- to put it due to him -- Rupert Murdoch's papers do what I think papers are supposed to do -- and that is they take a stand, and even if you don't agree with it, you have to respect their using those papers for the way I think American journalism historically was meant to be used.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: In other words objectivity is a myth. Best to lay it out there -- let the public know what your biases are and read with that information.
WALTER PINCUS: Right.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Let's talk about your paper, the Washington Post. We've noted on this program the Washington Post has been ahead of most of the mainstream press in fact-checking the Bush administration. How have they treated your particularly pointed investigations of the Bush administration's statements? You weren't always on the front page.
WALTER PINCUS: No. There was a period of time in the pre-war and in early in the war period when it was not on the front page, but at least the Post was publishing these stories. When they decided that a story was powerful enough and put it on the front page and began having impact, we had a whole run of them, and I think that's had a big impact, the Post, on the way other journalists look at it.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:A recent piece in The Nation has you quoting something that Eugene McCarthy once told you -- that "The press is a bunch of blackbirds. All are on a wire and, and one will go to another wire and when that bird doesn't get electrocuted, all the birds will go to that other wire." So-- was the Post that blackbird that made it safe for the rest of the media or, or was it the administration itself, backing away from its own words?
WALTER PINCUS: Well you have it both ways. The Post did put it on the front page, and it did have an impact. The president himself saying it in a press conference but he said it only after he was pressed by a reporter -- he didn't volunteer it. They had been an administration that refuses to admit it's either made a mistake or changing course. When they decided to go back to the UN for aid in Iraq, they didn't say they're flipflopping. They just said they're modifying their views. The fact is, it's a reverse of policy, but they don't call it that.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Do you think now the media will be more diligent in following up the statements of the administration?
WALTER PINCUS:I think it all depends on what happens. I've always said from pre-war times to now the minute they find a chemical warhead or the minute they find Saddam Hussein, it all could change.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Okay. Walter Pincus, thank you very much.
WALTER PINCUS: You're welcome.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Walter Pincus covers national security affairs for the Washington Post.
BOB GARFIELD: [SHOUTING] I'm standing here on the deck of my home in Virginia being buffetted by the rain and wind of Hurricane Isabel. I'm here because I live here, but it's an image that you're probably not unfamiliar with these past few days.
MAN: [SHOUTING] Yeah, are you battened down to something right now? [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE] WO
MAN: [SHOUTING] It's -- yes, I'm-- I'm hanging on to a planter, and that's the only reason that I'm not blowing away. I don't know if you can see this thing, but-- [OVERLAPPING]
MAN: [SHOUTING] ...up at the top back there [LAUGHS] where our, our car was being moved --in reverse -- without -- against our will, just because of the sheer force of the winds. We're obviously getting a lot of... [OVERLAPPING]
MAN: [SHOUTING] Yeah, we're -- we're here! We're up against a generator. I think my buddy Mike took a-- I think my buddy Mike took a tumble. I can just, I can just hear the folks at home saying, "You know, they got what they deserved."
BOB GARFIELD: [SHOUTING] Not an unreasonable reaction, but -- they might also wonder -- whoever sent them?! Jerry Silbermann is one such. He's the news director of WTOC-TV in Savannah, Georgia. We spoke to him Thursday by phone just as Isabel was working up a head of steam. Larry, welcome to On the Media.
LARRY SILBERMANN: Thank you.
BOB GARFIELD: Who do you have on the scene where the storm is making landfall?
LARRY SILBERMANN: Currently I have one of our primary anchors, Mike Manhattan, a photographer and two engineers with our satellite truck.
BOB GARFIELD: Does WTOC routinely send a crew to the landfall point in East Coast storms?
LARRY SILBERMANN: My feeling coming in was anything Richmond and south I would have sent a crew to. If it's hitting from that point south, then it would have certainly had a chance of hitting here, so therefore it ends up being high interest. What we're doing today and tomorrow and the next couple of days as much for anything for our audience is the "it could have been us" or "what could have been for us" scenario.
BOB GARFIELD: There but for the grace of God.
LARRY SILBERMANN:Correct. It's a whole lot easier to send a crew in because you are-- controlling your own destiny from a-- at least from having the hardware going in. Now any time you send crews into a storm and specifically a hurricane, high winds and rain are not the most conducive elements for live television broadcast.
BOB GARFIELD: Albeit extremely traumatic.
LARRY SILBERMANN:It is compelling television if you're able to pull it off, and if you're not-- you know -more than anything not putting crew in harm's way and that's, you know, always our first and foremost concern. I mean you know - what kind of danger are we sending a crew into.
BOB GARFIELD:Well what about that calculation? How do you decide when it's justified to send your anchor and your crew into the teeth of what is predicted to be a killer storm?
LARRY SILBERMANN: I think for us it's a little bit easier because we're in a hurricane-prone area. The management of this television station meets every week during hurricane season. We have a lot of contingencies plans. We've been through hurricanes. Unless I felt confident that our crew would have a safe shelter in worst case scenario, I wouldn't do that. We're basically right now in Petersburg, Virginia, headquartering our crew out of a shelter area. So they are in a sturdy building that's protected and high-ground so you don't have to worry about that as much. There's always a certain amount of inherent danger. I would not ever send anyone who didn't want to go.
BOB GARFIELD:You mentioned that you began gearing up for Isabel about a week ago, but within the last few days it's been quite clear that Savannah was going to be spared. How exactly will the people of Savannah be served by having Mike Manhattan on the scene at a hurricane that will never come near them? What's to be gained?
LARRY SILBERMANN: There's always lessons to be gained. You know we're documenting history. You know those who don't learn from history are, are doomed to repeat it. For a city like Savannah that's a coastal community and every year we're facing threats of hurricanes, then any time we can bring that closer to our viewers so they can see how other hurricanes are creating damage, destruction, havoc on a region, then it, it gives everyone here the greater appreciation for what they need to do next time.
BOB GARFIELD:All right. Let me ask you an obnoxious question. It's obnoxious but it's also I think the essence of the thing. If Mike and the crew come back and you've had the only Savannah coverage live from the center of the storm and they have an exciting time and they get the news, I guess it'll be high-fives all around. But if their -- you know if their truck is hit by a fallen tree or if they get caught in a flash flood and drown or something else horrible happens to them, then what are you left with?
LARRY SILBERMANN: You know I don't know that my feelings would change; if something tragic or horrible happened, you know, I'd look at it and, and go-- what did we do wrong - and move on. I've worked in all four corners of this country and I've covered just about every kind of natural disaster there is, and you know each time you learn and become smarter about it. I feel comfortable that I'm not putting someone at great, great risk here. You know we, we have a public service to, to cover news when and where it happens, and-- you know that's what we do, and it - we're a voluntary army. I mean no one was drafted in and forced to do anything. People do what they do in this business cause they love what they do.
BOB GARFIELD: All right. Well of course I wish Mike and the crew well and-- thank you very much for joining us.
LARRY SILBERMANN: Thank you.
BOB GARFIELD:Larry Silbermann is news director at WTOC Savannah which has a crew on the scene for coverage of Hurricane or now Tropical Storm Isabel.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Up next, an American reporter who met face to face with the Iraqi resistance.
BOB GARFIELD: This is On the Media from NPR.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: We're back with On the Media. I'm Brooke Gladstone.
BOB GARFIELD: And I'm Bob Garfield. In recent weeks the headlines have been dominated by stories from around the globe -- America's Plea for Help in Iraq -- Israel's Hard Line on Yasir Arafat --The Walkout at the World Trade Organization Conference in Cancun, Mexico -- and all sorts of stuff that Martin Walker, as always, has collected. Martin is the chief international correspondent for United Press International and is back to tell us what is being said in the world press. Martin, welcome back!
MARTIN WALKER: Hello there.
BOB GARFIELD: Let's start with the courting by President Bush of allies to come in and help clean up a very difficult situation in Iraq. What's the European press saying about that?
MARTIN WALKER: Well, they're not being nearly as negative as you might expect. Le Monde, the French newspaper, said "Neither France nor any other European country has any interest whatsoever in telling the American government we told you so nor in helping to make matters worse when we all have an interest in restoring stability in Iraq." The center-left Frankfurter Rundschau of Germany is really cautiously upbeat. It says "Any opportunity to repair damaged relations between Europe and America must be seized with both hands."
BOB GARFIELD:Have others, however, voiced the predictable sentiments that the United States has arrogantly, unilaterally gotten itself in this situation and-- now is no time to ask for Europe to bail us out?
MARTIN WALKER: You're very nearly quoting the editorial in Kommersant the Russian financial daily which says "Many in the world and particularly in Europe really believe that saving the drowning is a job for the drowning themselves. The attitude is the Americans have got themselves into this mess, so they can jolly well sort it out themselves." The Russian press though has really been almost unique in being quite so waspish about this.
BOB GARFIELD:You used the term "waspish." The waspishness is not confined to the discussion of the United States's Iraq policy but coverage of all things U.S. has been quite harsh coming from Russia!
MARTIN WALKER: Well it has been. I mean I was very struck by the way in which the Russian press marked the anniversary of 9/11. Moskovsky Komsomolets for example condemned what it called "the new habit in America to turn 9/11 into an indulgence - into a reason, a justification, a propaganda symbol, an advertising tag, a source of permission for absolutely everything - to excuse any kind of American behavior. The ashes of those who died on 11th of September should not just touch our hearts but also our minds. Ramming those ashes into cannon like gunpowder is blashphemy." Now this kind of stuff struck me as being very strident given that we've got President Putin coming for a summit in Washington next month and that the Russian government has made it clear that they're not against an international military force in Iraq, nor are they against an American commander and that they are, as Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov was saying just this week, they are "ready to consider sending Russian troops to such an international force." So, there's a bit of a disconnect here which, which I find striking.
BOB GARFIELD: Any explanation that you can come up with?
MARTIN WALKER:Yes, I, I think what it reflects is the degree to which the Kremlin leadership of President Vladimir Putin is out of step with a great deal of Russian opinion on attitudes towards the United States. There's a very strong I think tradition certainly in the Russian armed forces, certainly in much of Russian officialdom to still think of the U.S. in terms if not of the Cold War as being a very, very grudging kind of partner for the U.S. -the Americans haven't really supported Russia on Chechnya and the United States is still dragging its feet over getting rid of some of those Cold War legacies like the Jackson-Vanick Amendment which restricts Russian trade.
BOB GARFIELD:In the World Trade Organization talks in Cancun, developing nations walked out in disgust at what they perceived to be the developed world's lack of trade concessions to poorer countries, and it was a little surprising, at least in the European press how they decided to apportion blame!
MARTIN WALKER: They are tending very much more to blame the European Union than to blame the Americans. And I find that quite striking, because normally the European press is, is very, very quick to throw as much blame as it possibly can on to the United States. But France's Liberation, for example, which is a, a left wing paper says "The European Union has taken much of the blame for the collapse of the World Trade talks -- quite rightly so. European in particular but also the Americans and Japanese have to decide once and for all whether or not they are prepared to accept the rules of a free trade game which they themselves drew up but which they merrily violate with dismaying regularity." In the Middle Eastern press, in the Arab press in particular, you really have the Third World view. Al Ahram for example. "At long last the poor took a stand against the Machiavellian machinations and threats of the rich and powerful nations. The poor countries simply refuse to cave in to the demands or accept the bones tossed to them as sufficient compensation for historical injustices. Cancun was a crushing defeat for the United States and the European Union."
BOB GARFIELD:Well let's talk about the Arab press for a moment. Early in the week, an Israeli politician made what I suppose was a blunder in saying aloud what a lot of people have been thinking now for years which was that it was in Israel's interest to get rid of Yasir Arafat, either by deportation, exile or by actual political assassination. This of course raised a storm of criticism and-- I guess not the least of which from the Arab press.
MARTIN WALKER: Oh, well the Arab press has been absolutely hysterical about this. "Orders to Murder, Israel to Send Out Its 007s" -- that's from the Egyptian paper Al Usbu. Al-Waft of Saudi Arabia -- this is from an editorial -- "How can anybody now consider Israel to be an acceptable negotiating partner when it violates every norm of international behavior and threatens assassination upon an elected leader of an Arab people?" The tone is predictably strong in, in the Arab press, but it's, it's also going along with something else which is really starting to strike me as-- rather worrying which is the way in which the Arab press is increasingly taking on board now the view that 9/11 wasn't nearly what it said -- that the Americans did it themselves. There was Al Jazeera for example that -- its most top-rated program is From the Other Side -- a TV talk show -- and two Arab newspapers now I've seen have run transcripts of the latest show which was a debate between an American spokesman, Jonathan Chancer [ph] of the Washington Institute for Near East Affairs and the French author Thierry Meyssan who wrote that book Appalling Fraud, saying the Pentagon themselves bombed the Pentagon on 9/11. And the poll conducted by the Al Jazeera TV show found that at the start of the program, 74 percent of Al Jazeera's viewers believed the French author. By the end of the show, the number believing the French author had risen to 87 percent. So the tone of the Arab press is-- absolutely extraordinary at the moment, and I think it really reflects the combination of both Iraq and the renewed crisis in Israel-Palestine relations.
BOB GARFIELD: Well, listen - thank you very much. As always, it's been a pleasure.
MARTIN WALKER: Thank you.
BOB GARFIELD: Martin Walker is the chief correspondent for United Press International. BROOKE GLADSTONE: Since the official end of major combat operations in Iraq, close to 80 American soldiers have been killed in hostile incidents. Almost daily news seems to come of another fatality. This week the New York Times reported that 4400 people are being held as, quote, "security detainees" in connection with the continuing skirmishes in Iraq. But in the same day's paper, unnamed Defense Department officials were quoted as saying "The most formidable foes in Iraq aren't the diehard seekers of martyrdom but rather ordinary Iraqis who are increasingly resentful of the U.S. occupation." So who exactly is the enemy? Hannah Allam is a reporter for the St. Paul Pioneer Press. In late August and early September she went behind the lines of Iraqis determined to defeat the Americans. Hannah, welcome to the show.
HANNAH ALLAM: Thanks for having me.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Was there something about this conflict in particular and the media coverage of it that motivated you to do this story?
HANNAH ALLAM: Well I think in, in other conflicts in the Middle East we've seen, you know, reports from inside Hezbollah, from inside Hamas, from inside other opposition groups -- this is so recent and it's really sort of a faceless opposition. So that fascinated me -- who are these people - why are they doing this and, and how do they think they can win against a superpower?
BROOKE GLADSTONE: So tell me about how you finally managed to get access to these people.
HANNAH ALLAM:Well it was really difficult. As soon as I arrived in Iraq, I asked some fixers I was working with to make some inroads, and they laughed at me. [LAUGHS] Maybe because they -I guess they just didn't think it was possible or that it was too dangerous. But they went to work on it, and-- weeks later we heard back from this particular group. There were several more days of negotiations on conditions for the meeting, and we made conditions of our own up front -- we are not paying for any interview -- we don't want to know about any attacks in advance -- we don't want to accompany you on any attacks -- we just want to hear about why you do what you do. And then one day we received a date and time, and-- we just went!
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Once your contacts had arranged the meeting, it sounds as if they were completely willing to tell you their stories, and, and they didn't try to hide much from you at all!
HANNAH ALLAM: I was really, really surprised and pleased that we got the access we did, because seeing them, especially at the camp, hanging laundry on pomegranate trees and picking dates together, swimming in the canal -- it was just-- fascinating. I, I would never have pictured that. And certainly they were very candid in their words, describing the attacks, describing their ideology and their plans for the future.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Do you think that the fact that you are an Arab-American may have offered a measure of protection?
HANNAH ALLAM:I think so. They even said that, actually. And-- I think it made it easier both in getting the interview and, and it made for a more comfortable atmosphere during the interview. The photographer and I went of course in hijab in the scarf and in abaya, the long black robe, so we were covered up. We were respectful. We just really sort of wanted to be the, the gray people -- not causing any trouble -- not-- doing anything that would alarm them.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: How would you define the group that you finally got in contact with?
HANNAH ALLAM:This group was a mixture of foreign fighters. I personally met a Jordanian. But there were also Afghans, Palestinians, Egyptians and I think Lebanese as well. And then remnants of the Arab unit of the Fedayeen Saddam. And there were also just young Iraqis who were angry about raids on their relatives' homes or civilian deaths or at friends' detentions --things like that.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Now there are a lot of American journalists out there who as Americans would have a hard time reporting objectively on people whose mission is to kill U.S. soldiers! But you had an even more personal involvement with this story.
HANNAH ALLAM: Yes. My brother's a sergeant in the Marine Corps; an Arabic linguist. And we were in Iraq for some of the same time. Certainly he was on my mind every step of the way, and I guess the most chilling moment for me was leaving and being led back onto the main road when the cell leader had broken off the interview to go on an attack, as he said, and-- and we heard the explosion and the two men in the front seat looked at each other and smiled. And I was just really sad at that moment, and, and thinking you know how, how that could have been my brother. And I have another brother who's also in the Marine Corps and was in Afghanistan in the war on terror, so I've, I've actually got two brothers who look like these guys, whose names are like these guys, and yet they're enemies, you know, and it was just-- it was hard.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Have you talked to your brothers about this story?
HANNAH ALLAM:Not yet. I've-- I've gotten an e-mail from one of them and, and he said "good job. You're crazy, but I'm glad you're back okay." [LAUGHS]
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Speaking of crazy -- to what extent did the spectre of Wall Street Journal reporter Danny Pearl hang over your head? I mean he went off in the company of people who he had ample reason to doubt -- and he was killed!
HANNAH ALLAM: You know-- he was on our mind the entire time. From the first phone call till the sigh of relief when we left. And I'm sure he was on the minds of my editors as well. And-- and the third time we went to meet with them, my editor said "It's just too risky -- we're tempting fate -- you can't go." We talked a long time, and in the end they said "Go ahead. Do a third interview." The middle man who, who we'd been working disappeared without a trace; his wife was frantic. We still haven't heard whatever happened to him. So a third meeting -- it was planned but aborted, and-- I can only say thank goodness now. Because who knows what happened to that guy?
BROOKE GLADSTONE: What kind of a response have you gotten from readers?
HANNAH ALLAM:Overwhelmingly positive, although there have been a few e-mails that were very critical. One man wrote that these men were misguided, brainwashed, and that "I only hope that you don't feel some journalistic responsibility to not reveal the location of the camp. If that means in the future no journalist will be safe interviewing members of the terrorist opposition, then so be it. Maybe it's best they aren't interviewed anyway." That e-mail was the one that bothered me the most I guess.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Did you ever for a moment doubt what you were doing?
HANNAH ALLAM:I really don't have any ethical misgivings at all about this story, and I know my editors support me in that, which was really a relief. Because I do know that this angered some people; they've called me a traitor. But then again I've gotten an e-mail from a Lutheran chaplain in Minnesota who said thank you -"thank you for putting a face on this problem that U.S. soldiers face every day in Iraq -actually 12 to 14 times a day they're attacked - and I think that we'd all be better off by knowing who's doing this and why."
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Hannah, thank you very much.
HANNAH ALLAM: Thank you.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Hannah Allam is a reporter for the St. Paul Pioneer Press. This week she returned from 8 weeks in Iraq as a correspondent for the Knight-Ridder Foreign Press. [MUSIC] BROOKE GLADSTONE: We got a lot of feedback on last week's program. Mike Gagliano wrote in with praise for Bob's piece about financial reporting. He wrote: "...Human emotions and a whole array of other complex factors determine why stocks rise and fall each day, much more so than your average broker would have you believe, and it was refreshing to see an honest look at this phenomenon. The fact is when it comes to the Stock Market, no one really knows what's going to happen tomorrow or why what happened today happened -- not even Warren Buffet." Eric Meijer wrote in to say: "I've been a financial journalist for about 20 years, the last 12 as a trainer of financial journalists for Reuters in London, as a contractor to Pearson in South Africa and for Fairfax Business Media in Australia and so on, and I think this piece was extremely astute and nicely done. All this is best summed up by Michael Lewis's dictum: "Those who say don't know. Those who know don't say." We did a story last week about ABC transporting depleted uranium as a matter of investigative reporting. I spoke with Homeland Security Department spokesman Dennis Murphy about this "radioactive" matter and Rich Wipfler of Menlo Park, California had this to say: "I was under the mistaken impression that if depleted uranium can be sent into the U.S. undetected, then there were serious flaws in our port security system. I came to understand by listening to our government representative that this was not the case." And Mr. Wipfler wishes that I'd focused more on that point. But Phillip H. Klein had this reaction: "Mr. Murphy is completely correct when he says that noble intent does not permit one to flout the law. After he said that, however, he appeared to be trying to give the impression that, had the uranium that ABC shipped not been depleted, it could have been detected. As a former radiation chemist, I must disagree. I know of no rapid way to determine whether or not a bar of uranium has been depleted. At best it requires sophisticated equipment that can determine the energies of the particles emitted as uranium decays to other materials over the course of hundreds of millions of years." We appreciate your letters and scientific explanations. Keep them coming. Write to us at onthemedia.org and please, please, please don't forget to tell us where you live and how to pronounce your name. [MUSIC]
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Coming up, journalists in Mexico take the law into their own hands, and is true crime writing getting respectable?
BOB GARFIELD: This On the Media from NPR.
BOB GARFIELD: We're back with On the Media. I'm Bob Garfield.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: And I'm Brooke Gladstone. For ten years now, reporters along the border of Texas and Mexico have been tracking the disappearances, murders and rapes of about a hundred Mexican girls and women -- by some estimates, several hundred more. It's the kind of story that would elicit a pile on of United States law enforcement. Federal and local police would fall all over each other to solve such a high profile case. But in Juarez, Mexico law enforcement has come nowhere near to solving the case. Some people believe police and prosecutors are bending over backwards to maintain the mystery. In the absence of any discernible progress in the investigation, reporters seem to be taking the lead and blurring the lines between journalism, activism and law enforcement. On the Media's Marianne McCune reports.
MARIANNE McCUNE: Even the mostly poor, uneducated mothers of those killed seem able to investigate ore thoroughly than do local police. After 20-year old Claudia Gonzalez' maimed body turned up alongside seven others, it was her mother, Josefina Gonzalez, who went back to where she was found to look for clues. [JOSEFINA GONZALEZ SPEAKING IN SPANISH]
INTERPRETER: We found her pants in a bag under some bushes, and another day we looked again and found her factory I.D. just lying there in the desert.
MARIANNE McCUNE: Across the border in El Paso, FBI special agent Art Werge says that's just the kind of thing he would do.
ART WERGE: Attack the problem until the problem is resolved. We set up a computerized system of following each and every lead. If we assigned a lead to agents--
MARIANNE McCUNE: Police in Juarez have made arrests -- several dozen people are in jail -- but only one has been convicted, and the evidence against those charged is questionable at best. One former forensics investigator quit the Chihuahua State Police saying he was pushed to plant evidence against a suspect. Art Werge held training sessions this year for Mexican investigators, but he says he's most impressed by the investigative skills of local newspapers.
ART WERGE: I've seen reports where they've actually diagrammed the areas the abduction has taken place, the dump site, the characteristics of the victims, what we call victimology. There's a lot of good leads.
DIANA WASHINGTON VALDEZ: We don't have a badge and a gun to go out and arrest anybody, but we can reveal, and then it's out there.
MARIANNE McCUNE: Diana Washington Valdez has been covering the case for years for the El Paso Times. She's written stories about investigations that were suppressed because they implicated wealthy and powerful men and about police who were suspects in crimes against women yet never prosecuted. But such revelations have done frustratingly little to spur officials into action. So sometimes reporters are taking action themselves. One helped set up a rape crisis center. And Washington Valdez was among those who recently barged in on a nightclub she believes is involved in the murders based on a leaked FBI report. A "media ambush" she called it. The group found the club's bathroom covered with pornographic photographs and the club's layout and staff matched those described in the report, but they found nothing to confirm accusations. Still, Washington Valdez says, they were able to alert Juarez residents of possible danger.
DIANA WASHINGTON VALDEZ: The time has come when we might have to increase the risk to ourselves in order to advance the issue. [BRIEF RADIO CLIP]
MARIANNE McCUNE: Case in point: Samira Izaguirre, one of the hosts of a popular Juarez radio show. [PHONE RINGING/SAMIRA IZAGUIRRE ON RADIO] When at her previous station two years ago, she urged listeners to come to a candlelight vigil in hopes of pushing the government to solve the murders. She says thousands more than she expected crowded the streets. [SAMIRA IZAGUIRRE SPEAKING IN SPANISH]
INTERPRETER: The government saw danger. They thought I wanted to attack them politically.
MARIANNE McCUNE: Izaguirre and her co-hosts were abruptly fired a few weeks later. The station said the hosts owed money for past air time, but Izaguirre believes Chihuahua State officials pressed the station to get rid of them. And now she's afraid of worse than losing her job; she says strange men have threatened her and her children and many other journalists as well. [SAMIRA IZAGUIRRE SPEAKING IN SPANISH]
INTERPRETER: I know they could kill me tomorrow, but right now I just think there's no one else addressing the problem.
MARIANNE McCUNE: There have been a handful of mysterious deaths connected with this case. After one government suspect said police tortured a confession out of him, he died mysteriously in prison. State police officers admitted to killing the defense lawyer of another suspect. They say it was self defense. [MAN SPEAKING IN SPANISH]
MARIANNE McCUNE: Alfredo Quijano Hernandez's small local newspaper El Norte has investigated the case perhaps more aggressively than any. He flips proudly through five days of the paper's coverage after state police killed defense attorney Mario Escobedo.
INTERPRETER: The front page of the paper reads "Disguised Execution." [ALFREDO QUIJANO HERNANDEZ SPEAKING IN SPANISH]
INTERPRETER: We heard through the police radio that the attorney had had an accident. When we got there, there were about 200 police officers there.
MARIANNE McCUNE: Quijano says he took pictures of every car in sight, so when state police released a photo of a bullet hole in one of its cars --supposed evidence that the attorney shot first -- Quijano published his own photo of the car that night, completely unscathed. [ALFREDO QUIJANO HERNANDEZ SPEAKING IN SPANISH]
INTERPRETER: We published the information saying we believe it was an assassination, and that provoked a strong reaction from the government.
MARIANNE McCUNE: That afternoon the reporter who wrote the story says he saw two big cars in his rear view mirror. [REPORTER SPEAKING IN SPANISH]
INTERPRETER: One car got in front of me, and then the other, and they blocked my way. Then one man got out of his car and I thought it was the end of me.
MARIANNE McCUNE: Carlos Huerta says they told him to stop with the kind of stories he'd been writing. He says he lied to them; told them he'd back down. Now he's still on the street, and they're still on the street, and so are the state police who shot defense attorney Escobedo. Despite El Norte's coverage, the government accepted the officers' claim that Escobedo shot first. Whether or not government officials are actually complicit in any of these crimes, Mexican media analyst Ernesto Villanueva says it's clear they're more interested in controlling public opinion than bringing the culprits to justice. Some mothers say they're urged not to talk to the press when they report their daughters missing. Officials in Chihuahua have even gone so far as to prosecute journalists for allegedly defaming them. And now, a state election is looming in Chihuahua.
ERNESTO VILLANUEVA: They try to buy the journalists, and if they can't do it, well they try to destroy them. They say if you want money or you want to have problem with me.
MARIANNE McCUNE: The state government has pulled its advertisements from El Norte, a severe economic blow in a country where most newspapers depend on government-paid advertising. Newspapers also bring in revenue with what are called casetillas --advertisements that look like news articles but are paid for by wealthy individuals. El Norte's competitor El Diario published claims that radio host and activist Samira Izaguirre was a regular at strip clubs -- not fit to be speaking for the mothers. Receipts showed the state government paid for the accusations, according to local reporters who followed up.
ERNESTO VILLANUEVA: You think that it's information, but it's --in fact, it's an advertisement, and you paid for that. It's an enemy with the, the people's right to know! And we have two sides -- the government that pay, and the press that accept to do it.
MARIANNE McCUNE: The result is more than the average confusion about who's printing the truth and when. Some mothers of murdered girls and their advocates accuse El Diario and other local papers of taking orders from the governor or even the local drug cartel. But El Diario reporter and editor Martin Orquiz retorts El Norte is a mouthpiece for the mothers and activists. [MARTIN ORQUIZ SPEAKING IN SPANISH]
INTERPRETER: We don't publish everything they want, and that bothers them. The easiest thing to do is accuse us of being with the governor or some political parties. El Diario is attacked all the time.
MARIANNE McCUNE: The powers that be may not succeed in efforts to intimidate individual reporters, but they do succeed in casting doubt in all directions. Media analyst Villanueva says two things need to happen before Juarez reporters can operate outside of politics.
ERNESTO VILLANUEVA: We, we have to, to cut the economical ties between media and, and government--
MARIANNE McCUNE: And far more difficult, he says, fix a broken justice system so that reporters don't have to fill in the void. Still, many locals say if the Juarez mystery is ever solved, it will be because reporters have stretched the boundaries of their jobs. Local coverage has attracted international attention, and the murders are slowly becoming a worldwide human rights issue. Whether every detail reported is accurate may not matter. Any version of this story adds to the pressure on Mexico to act. For On the Media I'm Marianne McCune in Mexico City. [MUSIC]
BOB GARFIELD: This month Vintage Books releases the 2003 edition of Best American Crime Writing, an anthology containing some of the best true crime articles from 2002. True crime writing fills supermarket racks and occasionally tops best seller lists, and whether it's the tale of an aging pimp in Las Vegas or a body farm in Tennessee, co-editors Otto Penzler and Thomas Cook [sp?] write, the best of the genre illuminates, quote, "the dual nature of human potential; the good and the evil men and women can do." Joining me now is Otto Penzler. Otto, welcome to the show.
OTTO PENZLER: Thank you, Bob.
BOB GARFIELD: Explain to me, please, the enduring appeal of true crime.
OTTO PENZLER: There's a voyeuristic attraction to it I think that has undoubtedly been true since the first days of the Bible when we read about Cain slaying Abel.
BOB GARFIELD: And then there's this notion of a portal into the human soul. Do you think that in general true crime does offer that portal?
OTTO PENZLER:I do. One of the reasons is that when a good reporter goes to work on this kind of story, he will talk to the people who were most involved, and criminals love generally to talk about their crimes -- to talk about their lives. They get to talk about themselves. And so you get a first hand report which you can't do in fiction.
BOB GARFIELD:You operate a mystery book shop called The Mysterious Book Shop in New York City. And while I guess it's a related genre, crime fiction, it, it's not the same thing -- are you a big fan of the true crime genre yourself?
OTTO PENZLER: Surprisingly I'm not. Early on, I did read the Truman Capote book In Cold Blood and also The Onion Field by Joseph Wambaugh. And those are the two books that I regret having read in my life. They lived with me for weeks and months after. They haunted me. The tragedy of those was so moving to me, so heartbreaking that I have stayed away from reading full length books about true crime. The shorter pieces, journalistic pieces, are much easier for me to take, because you don't have 400 pages to get to know some person or some people who are ultimately doomed. In 20 pages they become acquaintances; in 400 pages they become people who are close to you, and I can't stand it.
BOB GARFIELD:Now when one thinks of true crime, historically one thinks of the Truman Capote book or Calvin Trillin's pieces about small town killings in the New Yorker magazine or maybe the works of Ann Rule. This anthology is maybe not representative of what we're accustomed to. Why was this year so different?
OTTO PENZLER: Well for a variety of reasons. The most important of course was the September 11th attack on the United States. Everybody is endlessly concerned about, interested in, fascinated by international terrorism. And so many more articles were written about that kind of crime rather than the more traditional thing of some orthodontist in a New Jersey suburb killing his wife because he'd met somebody that he would rather be with and didn't want to pay the divorce.
BOB GARFIELD: Can you give us a passage from whatever story particularly curls your toes?
OTTO PENZLER:Give me just one second please. This is from a piece by Tom Junod called The Terrible Boy. "There is nothing on this earth so terrible as a terrible boy. A terrible boy has learned the specifics of cruelty without learning the generality of mercy. A terrible boy worships what is worst in himself and despises what is best. A terrible boy is alienated by his own sense of enmity and seeks connection through the certainties of slaughter. A terrible boy makes even ants his enemies, for he wishes above all to make his enemies ants and to entertain himself by squashing them both. So terrible are terrible boys that armies the world over have discovered the utility of using them to do their bidding. So terrible are terrible boys that aboriginal tribes used to dispatch them on impossible and solitary missions, hoping they would come back tempered by quest and grown into men. We, who demand something softer from our civilization, have no such uses for terrible boys and no such rituals. Instead, we call them bullies and by new and coming coming consensus seek to outlaw them."
BOB GARFIELD: Tell me about the terrible boy who was the focus of this piece.
OTTO PENZLER:This was a terrible boy who was in fact a school bully and one day just picked on a kid, knocked him over, and the kid died from what happened to him by this bully, and I think Tom Junod's point in writing the story was to say that he just had a bad day; that he wasn't such a terrible boy after all; that so many of us have a time in our lives where we behave terribly and we don't want to be stigmatized with the notion of being called a terrible boy forever. And Juneau forgives him in this piece.
BOB GARFIELD:On the other hand there's another piece in the anthology called The Bully of Toulon about a man who terrorized an entire small town of 1700 people for years and years and years mainly by just threatening behavior --behavior that eventually exploded into actual violence.
OTTO PENZLER: Yeah. It was written by a great writer named Robert Kurson and we deliberately put it in the book directly after The Terrible Boy because I think Tom Cook and I agreed that the terrible boys grow up to be a man like this who terrorizes a town - who remains a bully all of his life - and ultimately in this case went so far as to kill 3 people totally without cause, totally in cold blood.
BOB GARFIELD:So we discussed what the appeal of this kind of non-fiction is. Can you tell me what its utility is? Do you think that the accumulation of stories, many of them very heartbreaking and of course horrifying as well -- what's the benefit of reading them? Are they, are they humanizing?
OTTO PENZLER: I think in many cases we get to learn something about a killer or a major criminal of some kind. Occasionally we learn that circumstances pushed them into a situation; that there are in fact mitigating circumstances and we can find it in our hearts to forgive them. We also learn, I think, and it's very useful to know that there really is such a thing as evil behavior. I would go so far as to say that there are evil people. And I think it's important for us to remember that there are evil people and that there is evil in the world and that we should beware.
BOB GARFIELD: Well, Otto, thank you very much.
OTTO PENZLER: Thank you, Bob. It's a pleasure to be here.
BOB GARFIELD:Otto Penzler is co-editor of Best American Crime Writing. The 2003 edition has just been released. And he's also the owner of the Mysterious Book Shop in New York City. [THEME MUSIC]
BOB GARFIELD:That's it for this week's show. On the Media is produced by Katya Rogers, Janeen Price, Megan Ryan and Tony Field; engineered by Dylan Keefe, Jennifer Munson and George Edwards, and edited-- by Brooke. We had help from Dave Goldberg. Our webmaster is Amy Pearl.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Arun Rath is our senior producer and Dean Cappello our executive producer. Bassist/composer Ben Allison wrote our theme. You can listen to the program and get free transcripts at onthemedia.org and e-mail us at onthemedia@wnyc.org. This is On the Media from NPR. I'm Brooke Gladstone.
BOB GARFIELD: And I'm Bob Garfield.
GEORGE W. BUSH: "We've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with September 11th."
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Well you know what he meant. And Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice said much the same this week. Some political analysts believe it was damage control after Vice President Dick Cheney who didn't get the memo went on Meet the Press last Sunday still vaguely pointing fingers at Saddam. The president's corrective has led to a flood of coverage on all the networks and cable news stations, also all the major papers. But only one paper fact-checked Mr. Cheney after his chat with Tim Russert. (Of course Tim Russert didn't.) The Washington Post did. And the Washington Post reporter who seems to have spent the most time fact-checking the president on his justifications for war is Walter Pincus who's seen wars in Korea and Vietnam and has plugged away at the Post for decades. I asked him why the press has been so cautious with presidential pronouncements since 9/11.
WALTER PINCUS: There's been a sort of underlying fear that tomorrow somebody could roll a hand grenade in a shopping mall in Omaha and we'd be off again, so nobody wanted to make that kind of mistake or be out on a -- on that kind of limb.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: And you would agree that the press for the most part has restrained itself in fact-checking this administration!
WALTER PINCUS:There's a phenomena to this that's not unusual. I can remember back in the Reagan administration, the first two or three press conferences President Reagan had we used to regularly take what he said and, and show how he either didn't understand the subject or misstated it, and the public was outraged!--and didn't want to hear it. And I think that has had an impact over the years.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:As we read the papers and as we watch the television news programs on broadcast and cable, we see things that are notable by their absence and then notable by their sudden presence! We're suddenly seeing criticism and analysis that we haven't seen since 9/11! So what's changed?
WALTER PINCUS: Well I think part of what's changed is Iraq has changed the way people are looking at it, and I think slowly but surely it has come into people's mind to question why we're there. In the 1960s when Vietnam was on and what people forget is at a time when we're losing hundreds of soldiers a week, the public still was in favor of the war! It wasn't till less than a year before the war ended that the public at large turned around. There was, however, a very vocal center of opposition, both in the House and Senate who were regularly speaking out and could be quoted. You didn't have that here.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:So it really helps to have the Congress criticizing. It gives the press a little bit of cover and allows them to proceed in their investigations without perhaps attracting as much ire from the public that they might otherwise get.
WALTER PINCUS: I think to be honest there is that feeling, and to some degree the crusading which is what this used to be called has dropped out of favor. John Knight who used to run Knight newspapers ran an editorial of his own on the front page of every Sunday paper. Knight-Ridder now you, you don't know who the policymaker is except their concern is how much money they're making. And that's why in-- to put it due to him -- Rupert Murdoch's papers do what I think papers are supposed to do -- and that is they take a stand, and even if you don't agree with it, you have to respect their using those papers for the way I think American journalism historically was meant to be used.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: In other words objectivity is a myth. Best to lay it out there -- let the public know what your biases are and read with that information.
WALTER PINCUS: Right.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Let's talk about your paper, the Washington Post. We've noted on this program the Washington Post has been ahead of most of the mainstream press in fact-checking the Bush administration. How have they treated your particularly pointed investigations of the Bush administration's statements? You weren't always on the front page.
WALTER PINCUS: No. There was a period of time in the pre-war and in early in the war period when it was not on the front page, but at least the Post was publishing these stories. When they decided that a story was powerful enough and put it on the front page and began having impact, we had a whole run of them, and I think that's had a big impact, the Post, on the way other journalists look at it.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:A recent piece in The Nation has you quoting something that Eugene McCarthy once told you -- that "The press is a bunch of blackbirds. All are on a wire and, and one will go to another wire and when that bird doesn't get electrocuted, all the birds will go to that other wire." So-- was the Post that blackbird that made it safe for the rest of the media or, or was it the administration itself, backing away from its own words?
WALTER PINCUS: Well you have it both ways. The Post did put it on the front page, and it did have an impact. The president himself saying it in a press conference but he said it only after he was pressed by a reporter -- he didn't volunteer it. They had been an administration that refuses to admit it's either made a mistake or changing course. When they decided to go back to the UN for aid in Iraq, they didn't say they're flipflopping. They just said they're modifying their views. The fact is, it's a reverse of policy, but they don't call it that.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Do you think now the media will be more diligent in following up the statements of the administration?
WALTER PINCUS:I think it all depends on what happens. I've always said from pre-war times to now the minute they find a chemical warhead or the minute they find Saddam Hussein, it all could change.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Okay. Walter Pincus, thank you very much.
WALTER PINCUS: You're welcome.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Walter Pincus covers national security affairs for the Washington Post.
BOB GARFIELD: [SHOUTING] I'm standing here on the deck of my home in Virginia being buffetted by the rain and wind of Hurricane Isabel. I'm here because I live here, but it's an image that you're probably not unfamiliar with these past few days.
MAN: [SHOUTING] Yeah, are you battened down to something right now? [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE] WO
MAN: [SHOUTING] It's -- yes, I'm-- I'm hanging on to a planter, and that's the only reason that I'm not blowing away. I don't know if you can see this thing, but-- [OVERLAPPING]
MAN: [SHOUTING] ...up at the top back there [LAUGHS] where our, our car was being moved --in reverse -- without -- against our will, just because of the sheer force of the winds. We're obviously getting a lot of... [OVERLAPPING]
MAN: [SHOUTING] Yeah, we're -- we're here! We're up against a generator. I think my buddy Mike took a-- I think my buddy Mike took a tumble. I can just, I can just hear the folks at home saying, "You know, they got what they deserved."
BOB GARFIELD: [SHOUTING] Not an unreasonable reaction, but -- they might also wonder -- whoever sent them?! Jerry Silbermann is one such. He's the news director of WTOC-TV in Savannah, Georgia. We spoke to him Thursday by phone just as Isabel was working up a head of steam. Larry, welcome to On the Media.
LARRY SILBERMANN: Thank you.
BOB GARFIELD: Who do you have on the scene where the storm is making landfall?
LARRY SILBERMANN: Currently I have one of our primary anchors, Mike Manhattan, a photographer and two engineers with our satellite truck.
BOB GARFIELD: Does WTOC routinely send a crew to the landfall point in East Coast storms?
LARRY SILBERMANN: My feeling coming in was anything Richmond and south I would have sent a crew to. If it's hitting from that point south, then it would have certainly had a chance of hitting here, so therefore it ends up being high interest. What we're doing today and tomorrow and the next couple of days as much for anything for our audience is the "it could have been us" or "what could have been for us" scenario.
BOB GARFIELD: There but for the grace of God.
LARRY SILBERMANN:Correct. It's a whole lot easier to send a crew in because you are-- controlling your own destiny from a-- at least from having the hardware going in. Now any time you send crews into a storm and specifically a hurricane, high winds and rain are not the most conducive elements for live television broadcast.
BOB GARFIELD: Albeit extremely traumatic.
LARRY SILBERMANN:It is compelling television if you're able to pull it off, and if you're not-- you know -more than anything not putting crew in harm's way and that's, you know, always our first and foremost concern. I mean you know - what kind of danger are we sending a crew into.
BOB GARFIELD:Well what about that calculation? How do you decide when it's justified to send your anchor and your crew into the teeth of what is predicted to be a killer storm?
LARRY SILBERMANN: I think for us it's a little bit easier because we're in a hurricane-prone area. The management of this television station meets every week during hurricane season. We have a lot of contingencies plans. We've been through hurricanes. Unless I felt confident that our crew would have a safe shelter in worst case scenario, I wouldn't do that. We're basically right now in Petersburg, Virginia, headquartering our crew out of a shelter area. So they are in a sturdy building that's protected and high-ground so you don't have to worry about that as much. There's always a certain amount of inherent danger. I would not ever send anyone who didn't want to go.
BOB GARFIELD:You mentioned that you began gearing up for Isabel about a week ago, but within the last few days it's been quite clear that Savannah was going to be spared. How exactly will the people of Savannah be served by having Mike Manhattan on the scene at a hurricane that will never come near them? What's to be gained?
LARRY SILBERMANN: There's always lessons to be gained. You know we're documenting history. You know those who don't learn from history are, are doomed to repeat it. For a city like Savannah that's a coastal community and every year we're facing threats of hurricanes, then any time we can bring that closer to our viewers so they can see how other hurricanes are creating damage, destruction, havoc on a region, then it, it gives everyone here the greater appreciation for what they need to do next time.
BOB GARFIELD:All right. Let me ask you an obnoxious question. It's obnoxious but it's also I think the essence of the thing. If Mike and the crew come back and you've had the only Savannah coverage live from the center of the storm and they have an exciting time and they get the news, I guess it'll be high-fives all around. But if their -- you know if their truck is hit by a fallen tree or if they get caught in a flash flood and drown or something else horrible happens to them, then what are you left with?
LARRY SILBERMANN: You know I don't know that my feelings would change; if something tragic or horrible happened, you know, I'd look at it and, and go-- what did we do wrong - and move on. I've worked in all four corners of this country and I've covered just about every kind of natural disaster there is, and you know each time you learn and become smarter about it. I feel comfortable that I'm not putting someone at great, great risk here. You know we, we have a public service to, to cover news when and where it happens, and-- you know that's what we do, and it - we're a voluntary army. I mean no one was drafted in and forced to do anything. People do what they do in this business cause they love what they do.
BOB GARFIELD: All right. Well of course I wish Mike and the crew well and-- thank you very much for joining us.
LARRY SILBERMANN: Thank you.
BOB GARFIELD:Larry Silbermann is news director at WTOC Savannah which has a crew on the scene for coverage of Hurricane or now Tropical Storm Isabel.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Up next, an American reporter who met face to face with the Iraqi resistance.
BOB GARFIELD: This is On the Media from NPR.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: We're back with On the Media. I'm Brooke Gladstone.
BOB GARFIELD: And I'm Bob Garfield. In recent weeks the headlines have been dominated by stories from around the globe -- America's Plea for Help in Iraq -- Israel's Hard Line on Yasir Arafat --The Walkout at the World Trade Organization Conference in Cancun, Mexico -- and all sorts of stuff that Martin Walker, as always, has collected. Martin is the chief international correspondent for United Press International and is back to tell us what is being said in the world press. Martin, welcome back!
MARTIN WALKER: Hello there.
BOB GARFIELD: Let's start with the courting by President Bush of allies to come in and help clean up a very difficult situation in Iraq. What's the European press saying about that?
MARTIN WALKER: Well, they're not being nearly as negative as you might expect. Le Monde, the French newspaper, said "Neither France nor any other European country has any interest whatsoever in telling the American government we told you so nor in helping to make matters worse when we all have an interest in restoring stability in Iraq." The center-left Frankfurter Rundschau of Germany is really cautiously upbeat. It says "Any opportunity to repair damaged relations between Europe and America must be seized with both hands."
BOB GARFIELD:Have others, however, voiced the predictable sentiments that the United States has arrogantly, unilaterally gotten itself in this situation and-- now is no time to ask for Europe to bail us out?
MARTIN WALKER: You're very nearly quoting the editorial in Kommersant the Russian financial daily which says "Many in the world and particularly in Europe really believe that saving the drowning is a job for the drowning themselves. The attitude is the Americans have got themselves into this mess, so they can jolly well sort it out themselves." The Russian press though has really been almost unique in being quite so waspish about this.
BOB GARFIELD:You used the term "waspish." The waspishness is not confined to the discussion of the United States's Iraq policy but coverage of all things U.S. has been quite harsh coming from Russia!
MARTIN WALKER: Well it has been. I mean I was very struck by the way in which the Russian press marked the anniversary of 9/11. Moskovsky Komsomolets for example condemned what it called "the new habit in America to turn 9/11 into an indulgence - into a reason, a justification, a propaganda symbol, an advertising tag, a source of permission for absolutely everything - to excuse any kind of American behavior. The ashes of those who died on 11th of September should not just touch our hearts but also our minds. Ramming those ashes into cannon like gunpowder is blashphemy." Now this kind of stuff struck me as being very strident given that we've got President Putin coming for a summit in Washington next month and that the Russian government has made it clear that they're not against an international military force in Iraq, nor are they against an American commander and that they are, as Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov was saying just this week, they are "ready to consider sending Russian troops to such an international force." So, there's a bit of a disconnect here which, which I find striking.
BOB GARFIELD: Any explanation that you can come up with?
MARTIN WALKER:Yes, I, I think what it reflects is the degree to which the Kremlin leadership of President Vladimir Putin is out of step with a great deal of Russian opinion on attitudes towards the United States. There's a very strong I think tradition certainly in the Russian armed forces, certainly in much of Russian officialdom to still think of the U.S. in terms if not of the Cold War as being a very, very grudging kind of partner for the U.S. -the Americans haven't really supported Russia on Chechnya and the United States is still dragging its feet over getting rid of some of those Cold War legacies like the Jackson-Vanick Amendment which restricts Russian trade.
BOB GARFIELD:In the World Trade Organization talks in Cancun, developing nations walked out in disgust at what they perceived to be the developed world's lack of trade concessions to poorer countries, and it was a little surprising, at least in the European press how they decided to apportion blame!
MARTIN WALKER: They are tending very much more to blame the European Union than to blame the Americans. And I find that quite striking, because normally the European press is, is very, very quick to throw as much blame as it possibly can on to the United States. But France's Liberation, for example, which is a, a left wing paper says "The European Union has taken much of the blame for the collapse of the World Trade talks -- quite rightly so. European in particular but also the Americans and Japanese have to decide once and for all whether or not they are prepared to accept the rules of a free trade game which they themselves drew up but which they merrily violate with dismaying regularity." In the Middle Eastern press, in the Arab press in particular, you really have the Third World view. Al Ahram for example. "At long last the poor took a stand against the Machiavellian machinations and threats of the rich and powerful nations. The poor countries simply refuse to cave in to the demands or accept the bones tossed to them as sufficient compensation for historical injustices. Cancun was a crushing defeat for the United States and the European Union."
BOB GARFIELD:Well let's talk about the Arab press for a moment. Early in the week, an Israeli politician made what I suppose was a blunder in saying aloud what a lot of people have been thinking now for years which was that it was in Israel's interest to get rid of Yasir Arafat, either by deportation, exile or by actual political assassination. This of course raised a storm of criticism and-- I guess not the least of which from the Arab press.
MARTIN WALKER: Oh, well the Arab press has been absolutely hysterical about this. "Orders to Murder, Israel to Send Out Its 007s" -- that's from the Egyptian paper Al Usbu. Al-Waft of Saudi Arabia -- this is from an editorial -- "How can anybody now consider Israel to be an acceptable negotiating partner when it violates every norm of international behavior and threatens assassination upon an elected leader of an Arab people?" The tone is predictably strong in, in the Arab press, but it's, it's also going along with something else which is really starting to strike me as-- rather worrying which is the way in which the Arab press is increasingly taking on board now the view that 9/11 wasn't nearly what it said -- that the Americans did it themselves. There was Al Jazeera for example that -- its most top-rated program is From the Other Side -- a TV talk show -- and two Arab newspapers now I've seen have run transcripts of the latest show which was a debate between an American spokesman, Jonathan Chancer [ph] of the Washington Institute for Near East Affairs and the French author Thierry Meyssan who wrote that book Appalling Fraud, saying the Pentagon themselves bombed the Pentagon on 9/11. And the poll conducted by the Al Jazeera TV show found that at the start of the program, 74 percent of Al Jazeera's viewers believed the French author. By the end of the show, the number believing the French author had risen to 87 percent. So the tone of the Arab press is-- absolutely extraordinary at the moment, and I think it really reflects the combination of both Iraq and the renewed crisis in Israel-Palestine relations.
BOB GARFIELD: Well, listen - thank you very much. As always, it's been a pleasure.
MARTIN WALKER: Thank you.
BOB GARFIELD: Martin Walker is the chief correspondent for United Press International. BROOKE GLADSTONE: Since the official end of major combat operations in Iraq, close to 80 American soldiers have been killed in hostile incidents. Almost daily news seems to come of another fatality. This week the New York Times reported that 4400 people are being held as, quote, "security detainees" in connection with the continuing skirmishes in Iraq. But in the same day's paper, unnamed Defense Department officials were quoted as saying "The most formidable foes in Iraq aren't the diehard seekers of martyrdom but rather ordinary Iraqis who are increasingly resentful of the U.S. occupation." So who exactly is the enemy? Hannah Allam is a reporter for the St. Paul Pioneer Press. In late August and early September she went behind the lines of Iraqis determined to defeat the Americans. Hannah, welcome to the show.
HANNAH ALLAM: Thanks for having me.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Was there something about this conflict in particular and the media coverage of it that motivated you to do this story?
HANNAH ALLAM: Well I think in, in other conflicts in the Middle East we've seen, you know, reports from inside Hezbollah, from inside Hamas, from inside other opposition groups -- this is so recent and it's really sort of a faceless opposition. So that fascinated me -- who are these people - why are they doing this and, and how do they think they can win against a superpower?
BROOKE GLADSTONE: So tell me about how you finally managed to get access to these people.
HANNAH ALLAM:Well it was really difficult. As soon as I arrived in Iraq, I asked some fixers I was working with to make some inroads, and they laughed at me. [LAUGHS] Maybe because they -I guess they just didn't think it was possible or that it was too dangerous. But they went to work on it, and-- weeks later we heard back from this particular group. There were several more days of negotiations on conditions for the meeting, and we made conditions of our own up front -- we are not paying for any interview -- we don't want to know about any attacks in advance -- we don't want to accompany you on any attacks -- we just want to hear about why you do what you do. And then one day we received a date and time, and-- we just went!
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Once your contacts had arranged the meeting, it sounds as if they were completely willing to tell you their stories, and, and they didn't try to hide much from you at all!
HANNAH ALLAM: I was really, really surprised and pleased that we got the access we did, because seeing them, especially at the camp, hanging laundry on pomegranate trees and picking dates together, swimming in the canal -- it was just-- fascinating. I, I would never have pictured that. And certainly they were very candid in their words, describing the attacks, describing their ideology and their plans for the future.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Do you think that the fact that you are an Arab-American may have offered a measure of protection?
HANNAH ALLAM:I think so. They even said that, actually. And-- I think it made it easier both in getting the interview and, and it made for a more comfortable atmosphere during the interview. The photographer and I went of course in hijab in the scarf and in abaya, the long black robe, so we were covered up. We were respectful. We just really sort of wanted to be the, the gray people -- not causing any trouble -- not-- doing anything that would alarm them.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: How would you define the group that you finally got in contact with?
HANNAH ALLAM:This group was a mixture of foreign fighters. I personally met a Jordanian. But there were also Afghans, Palestinians, Egyptians and I think Lebanese as well. And then remnants of the Arab unit of the Fedayeen Saddam. And there were also just young Iraqis who were angry about raids on their relatives' homes or civilian deaths or at friends' detentions --things like that.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Now there are a lot of American journalists out there who as Americans would have a hard time reporting objectively on people whose mission is to kill U.S. soldiers! But you had an even more personal involvement with this story.
HANNAH ALLAM: Yes. My brother's a sergeant in the Marine Corps; an Arabic linguist. And we were in Iraq for some of the same time. Certainly he was on my mind every step of the way, and I guess the most chilling moment for me was leaving and being led back onto the main road when the cell leader had broken off the interview to go on an attack, as he said, and-- and we heard the explosion and the two men in the front seat looked at each other and smiled. And I was just really sad at that moment, and, and thinking you know how, how that could have been my brother. And I have another brother who's also in the Marine Corps and was in Afghanistan in the war on terror, so I've, I've actually got two brothers who look like these guys, whose names are like these guys, and yet they're enemies, you know, and it was just-- it was hard.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Have you talked to your brothers about this story?
HANNAH ALLAM:Not yet. I've-- I've gotten an e-mail from one of them and, and he said "good job. You're crazy, but I'm glad you're back okay." [LAUGHS]
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Speaking of crazy -- to what extent did the spectre of Wall Street Journal reporter Danny Pearl hang over your head? I mean he went off in the company of people who he had ample reason to doubt -- and he was killed!
HANNAH ALLAM: You know-- he was on our mind the entire time. From the first phone call till the sigh of relief when we left. And I'm sure he was on the minds of my editors as well. And-- and the third time we went to meet with them, my editor said "It's just too risky -- we're tempting fate -- you can't go." We talked a long time, and in the end they said "Go ahead. Do a third interview." The middle man who, who we'd been working disappeared without a trace; his wife was frantic. We still haven't heard whatever happened to him. So a third meeting -- it was planned but aborted, and-- I can only say thank goodness now. Because who knows what happened to that guy?
BROOKE GLADSTONE: What kind of a response have you gotten from readers?
HANNAH ALLAM:Overwhelmingly positive, although there have been a few e-mails that were very critical. One man wrote that these men were misguided, brainwashed, and that "I only hope that you don't feel some journalistic responsibility to not reveal the location of the camp. If that means in the future no journalist will be safe interviewing members of the terrorist opposition, then so be it. Maybe it's best they aren't interviewed anyway." That e-mail was the one that bothered me the most I guess.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Did you ever for a moment doubt what you were doing?
HANNAH ALLAM:I really don't have any ethical misgivings at all about this story, and I know my editors support me in that, which was really a relief. Because I do know that this angered some people; they've called me a traitor. But then again I've gotten an e-mail from a Lutheran chaplain in Minnesota who said thank you -"thank you for putting a face on this problem that U.S. soldiers face every day in Iraq -actually 12 to 14 times a day they're attacked - and I think that we'd all be better off by knowing who's doing this and why."
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Hannah, thank you very much.
HANNAH ALLAM: Thank you.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Hannah Allam is a reporter for the St. Paul Pioneer Press. This week she returned from 8 weeks in Iraq as a correspondent for the Knight-Ridder Foreign Press. [MUSIC] BROOKE GLADSTONE: We got a lot of feedback on last week's program. Mike Gagliano wrote in with praise for Bob's piece about financial reporting. He wrote: "...Human emotions and a whole array of other complex factors determine why stocks rise and fall each day, much more so than your average broker would have you believe, and it was refreshing to see an honest look at this phenomenon. The fact is when it comes to the Stock Market, no one really knows what's going to happen tomorrow or why what happened today happened -- not even Warren Buffet." Eric Meijer wrote in to say: "I've been a financial journalist for about 20 years, the last 12 as a trainer of financial journalists for Reuters in London, as a contractor to Pearson in South Africa and for Fairfax Business Media in Australia and so on, and I think this piece was extremely astute and nicely done. All this is best summed up by Michael Lewis's dictum: "Those who say don't know. Those who know don't say." We did a story last week about ABC transporting depleted uranium as a matter of investigative reporting. I spoke with Homeland Security Department spokesman Dennis Murphy about this "radioactive" matter and Rich Wipfler of Menlo Park, California had this to say: "I was under the mistaken impression that if depleted uranium can be sent into the U.S. undetected, then there were serious flaws in our port security system. I came to understand by listening to our government representative that this was not the case." And Mr. Wipfler wishes that I'd focused more on that point. But Phillip H. Klein had this reaction: "Mr. Murphy is completely correct when he says that noble intent does not permit one to flout the law. After he said that, however, he appeared to be trying to give the impression that, had the uranium that ABC shipped not been depleted, it could have been detected. As a former radiation chemist, I must disagree. I know of no rapid way to determine whether or not a bar of uranium has been depleted. At best it requires sophisticated equipment that can determine the energies of the particles emitted as uranium decays to other materials over the course of hundreds of millions of years." We appreciate your letters and scientific explanations. Keep them coming. Write to us at onthemedia.org and please, please, please don't forget to tell us where you live and how to pronounce your name. [MUSIC]
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Coming up, journalists in Mexico take the law into their own hands, and is true crime writing getting respectable?
BOB GARFIELD: This On the Media from NPR.
BOB GARFIELD: We're back with On the Media. I'm Bob Garfield.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: And I'm Brooke Gladstone. For ten years now, reporters along the border of Texas and Mexico have been tracking the disappearances, murders and rapes of about a hundred Mexican girls and women -- by some estimates, several hundred more. It's the kind of story that would elicit a pile on of United States law enforcement. Federal and local police would fall all over each other to solve such a high profile case. But in Juarez, Mexico law enforcement has come nowhere near to solving the case. Some people believe police and prosecutors are bending over backwards to maintain the mystery. In the absence of any discernible progress in the investigation, reporters seem to be taking the lead and blurring the lines between journalism, activism and law enforcement. On the Media's Marianne McCune reports.
MARIANNE McCUNE: Even the mostly poor, uneducated mothers of those killed seem able to investigate ore thoroughly than do local police. After 20-year old Claudia Gonzalez' maimed body turned up alongside seven others, it was her mother, Josefina Gonzalez, who went back to where she was found to look for clues. [JOSEFINA GONZALEZ SPEAKING IN SPANISH]
INTERPRETER: We found her pants in a bag under some bushes, and another day we looked again and found her factory I.D. just lying there in the desert.
MARIANNE McCUNE: Across the border in El Paso, FBI special agent Art Werge says that's just the kind of thing he would do.
ART WERGE: Attack the problem until the problem is resolved. We set up a computerized system of following each and every lead. If we assigned a lead to agents--
MARIANNE McCUNE: Police in Juarez have made arrests -- several dozen people are in jail -- but only one has been convicted, and the evidence against those charged is questionable at best. One former forensics investigator quit the Chihuahua State Police saying he was pushed to plant evidence against a suspect. Art Werge held training sessions this year for Mexican investigators, but he says he's most impressed by the investigative skills of local newspapers.
ART WERGE: I've seen reports where they've actually diagrammed the areas the abduction has taken place, the dump site, the characteristics of the victims, what we call victimology. There's a lot of good leads.
DIANA WASHINGTON VALDEZ: We don't have a badge and a gun to go out and arrest anybody, but we can reveal, and then it's out there.
MARIANNE McCUNE: Diana Washington Valdez has been covering the case for years for the El Paso Times. She's written stories about investigations that were suppressed because they implicated wealthy and powerful men and about police who were suspects in crimes against women yet never prosecuted. But such revelations have done frustratingly little to spur officials into action. So sometimes reporters are taking action themselves. One helped set up a rape crisis center. And Washington Valdez was among those who recently barged in on a nightclub she believes is involved in the murders based on a leaked FBI report. A "media ambush" she called it. The group found the club's bathroom covered with pornographic photographs and the club's layout and staff matched those described in the report, but they found nothing to confirm accusations. Still, Washington Valdez says, they were able to alert Juarez residents of possible danger.
DIANA WASHINGTON VALDEZ: The time has come when we might have to increase the risk to ourselves in order to advance the issue. [BRIEF RADIO CLIP]
MARIANNE McCUNE: Case in point: Samira Izaguirre, one of the hosts of a popular Juarez radio show. [PHONE RINGING/SAMIRA IZAGUIRRE ON RADIO] When at her previous station two years ago, she urged listeners to come to a candlelight vigil in hopes of pushing the government to solve the murders. She says thousands more than she expected crowded the streets. [SAMIRA IZAGUIRRE SPEAKING IN SPANISH]
INTERPRETER: The government saw danger. They thought I wanted to attack them politically.
MARIANNE McCUNE: Izaguirre and her co-hosts were abruptly fired a few weeks later. The station said the hosts owed money for past air time, but Izaguirre believes Chihuahua State officials pressed the station to get rid of them. And now she's afraid of worse than losing her job; she says strange men have threatened her and her children and many other journalists as well. [SAMIRA IZAGUIRRE SPEAKING IN SPANISH]
INTERPRETER: I know they could kill me tomorrow, but right now I just think there's no one else addressing the problem.
MARIANNE McCUNE: There have been a handful of mysterious deaths connected with this case. After one government suspect said police tortured a confession out of him, he died mysteriously in prison. State police officers admitted to killing the defense lawyer of another suspect. They say it was self defense. [MAN SPEAKING IN SPANISH]
MARIANNE McCUNE: Alfredo Quijano Hernandez's small local newspaper El Norte has investigated the case perhaps more aggressively than any. He flips proudly through five days of the paper's coverage after state police killed defense attorney Mario Escobedo.
INTERPRETER: The front page of the paper reads "Disguised Execution." [ALFREDO QUIJANO HERNANDEZ SPEAKING IN SPANISH]
INTERPRETER: We heard through the police radio that the attorney had had an accident. When we got there, there were about 200 police officers there.
MARIANNE McCUNE: Quijano says he took pictures of every car in sight, so when state police released a photo of a bullet hole in one of its cars --supposed evidence that the attorney shot first -- Quijano published his own photo of the car that night, completely unscathed. [ALFREDO QUIJANO HERNANDEZ SPEAKING IN SPANISH]
INTERPRETER: We published the information saying we believe it was an assassination, and that provoked a strong reaction from the government.
MARIANNE McCUNE: That afternoon the reporter who wrote the story says he saw two big cars in his rear view mirror. [REPORTER SPEAKING IN SPANISH]
INTERPRETER: One car got in front of me, and then the other, and they blocked my way. Then one man got out of his car and I thought it was the end of me.
MARIANNE McCUNE: Carlos Huerta says they told him to stop with the kind of stories he'd been writing. He says he lied to them; told them he'd back down. Now he's still on the street, and they're still on the street, and so are the state police who shot defense attorney Escobedo. Despite El Norte's coverage, the government accepted the officers' claim that Escobedo shot first. Whether or not government officials are actually complicit in any of these crimes, Mexican media analyst Ernesto Villanueva says it's clear they're more interested in controlling public opinion than bringing the culprits to justice. Some mothers say they're urged not to talk to the press when they report their daughters missing. Officials in Chihuahua have even gone so far as to prosecute journalists for allegedly defaming them. And now, a state election is looming in Chihuahua.
ERNESTO VILLANUEVA: They try to buy the journalists, and if they can't do it, well they try to destroy them. They say if you want money or you want to have problem with me.
MARIANNE McCUNE: The state government has pulled its advertisements from El Norte, a severe economic blow in a country where most newspapers depend on government-paid advertising. Newspapers also bring in revenue with what are called casetillas --advertisements that look like news articles but are paid for by wealthy individuals. El Norte's competitor El Diario published claims that radio host and activist Samira Izaguirre was a regular at strip clubs -- not fit to be speaking for the mothers. Receipts showed the state government paid for the accusations, according to local reporters who followed up.
ERNESTO VILLANUEVA: You think that it's information, but it's --in fact, it's an advertisement, and you paid for that. It's an enemy with the, the people's right to know! And we have two sides -- the government that pay, and the press that accept to do it.
MARIANNE McCUNE: The result is more than the average confusion about who's printing the truth and when. Some mothers of murdered girls and their advocates accuse El Diario and other local papers of taking orders from the governor or even the local drug cartel. But El Diario reporter and editor Martin Orquiz retorts El Norte is a mouthpiece for the mothers and activists. [MARTIN ORQUIZ SPEAKING IN SPANISH]
INTERPRETER: We don't publish everything they want, and that bothers them. The easiest thing to do is accuse us of being with the governor or some political parties. El Diario is attacked all the time.
MARIANNE McCUNE: The powers that be may not succeed in efforts to intimidate individual reporters, but they do succeed in casting doubt in all directions. Media analyst Villanueva says two things need to happen before Juarez reporters can operate outside of politics.
ERNESTO VILLANUEVA: We, we have to, to cut the economical ties between media and, and government--
MARIANNE McCUNE: And far more difficult, he says, fix a broken justice system so that reporters don't have to fill in the void. Still, many locals say if the Juarez mystery is ever solved, it will be because reporters have stretched the boundaries of their jobs. Local coverage has attracted international attention, and the murders are slowly becoming a worldwide human rights issue. Whether every detail reported is accurate may not matter. Any version of this story adds to the pressure on Mexico to act. For On the Media I'm Marianne McCune in Mexico City. [MUSIC]
BOB GARFIELD: This month Vintage Books releases the 2003 edition of Best American Crime Writing, an anthology containing some of the best true crime articles from 2002. True crime writing fills supermarket racks and occasionally tops best seller lists, and whether it's the tale of an aging pimp in Las Vegas or a body farm in Tennessee, co-editors Otto Penzler and Thomas Cook [sp?] write, the best of the genre illuminates, quote, "the dual nature of human potential; the good and the evil men and women can do." Joining me now is Otto Penzler. Otto, welcome to the show.
OTTO PENZLER: Thank you, Bob.
BOB GARFIELD: Explain to me, please, the enduring appeal of true crime.
OTTO PENZLER: There's a voyeuristic attraction to it I think that has undoubtedly been true since the first days of the Bible when we read about Cain slaying Abel.
BOB GARFIELD: And then there's this notion of a portal into the human soul. Do you think that in general true crime does offer that portal?
OTTO PENZLER:I do. One of the reasons is that when a good reporter goes to work on this kind of story, he will talk to the people who were most involved, and criminals love generally to talk about their crimes -- to talk about their lives. They get to talk about themselves. And so you get a first hand report which you can't do in fiction.
BOB GARFIELD:You operate a mystery book shop called The Mysterious Book Shop in New York City. And while I guess it's a related genre, crime fiction, it, it's not the same thing -- are you a big fan of the true crime genre yourself?
OTTO PENZLER: Surprisingly I'm not. Early on, I did read the Truman Capote book In Cold Blood and also The Onion Field by Joseph Wambaugh. And those are the two books that I regret having read in my life. They lived with me for weeks and months after. They haunted me. The tragedy of those was so moving to me, so heartbreaking that I have stayed away from reading full length books about true crime. The shorter pieces, journalistic pieces, are much easier for me to take, because you don't have 400 pages to get to know some person or some people who are ultimately doomed. In 20 pages they become acquaintances; in 400 pages they become people who are close to you, and I can't stand it.
BOB GARFIELD:Now when one thinks of true crime, historically one thinks of the Truman Capote book or Calvin Trillin's pieces about small town killings in the New Yorker magazine or maybe the works of Ann Rule. This anthology is maybe not representative of what we're accustomed to. Why was this year so different?
OTTO PENZLER: Well for a variety of reasons. The most important of course was the September 11th attack on the United States. Everybody is endlessly concerned about, interested in, fascinated by international terrorism. And so many more articles were written about that kind of crime rather than the more traditional thing of some orthodontist in a New Jersey suburb killing his wife because he'd met somebody that he would rather be with and didn't want to pay the divorce.
BOB GARFIELD: Can you give us a passage from whatever story particularly curls your toes?
OTTO PENZLER:Give me just one second please. This is from a piece by Tom Junod called The Terrible Boy. "There is nothing on this earth so terrible as a terrible boy. A terrible boy has learned the specifics of cruelty without learning the generality of mercy. A terrible boy worships what is worst in himself and despises what is best. A terrible boy is alienated by his own sense of enmity and seeks connection through the certainties of slaughter. A terrible boy makes even ants his enemies, for he wishes above all to make his enemies ants and to entertain himself by squashing them both. So terrible are terrible boys that armies the world over have discovered the utility of using them to do their bidding. So terrible are terrible boys that aboriginal tribes used to dispatch them on impossible and solitary missions, hoping they would come back tempered by quest and grown into men. We, who demand something softer from our civilization, have no such uses for terrible boys and no such rituals. Instead, we call them bullies and by new and coming coming consensus seek to outlaw them."
BOB GARFIELD: Tell me about the terrible boy who was the focus of this piece.
OTTO PENZLER:This was a terrible boy who was in fact a school bully and one day just picked on a kid, knocked him over, and the kid died from what happened to him by this bully, and I think Tom Junod's point in writing the story was to say that he just had a bad day; that he wasn't such a terrible boy after all; that so many of us have a time in our lives where we behave terribly and we don't want to be stigmatized with the notion of being called a terrible boy forever. And Juneau forgives him in this piece.
BOB GARFIELD:On the other hand there's another piece in the anthology called The Bully of Toulon about a man who terrorized an entire small town of 1700 people for years and years and years mainly by just threatening behavior --behavior that eventually exploded into actual violence.
OTTO PENZLER: Yeah. It was written by a great writer named Robert Kurson and we deliberately put it in the book directly after The Terrible Boy because I think Tom Cook and I agreed that the terrible boys grow up to be a man like this who terrorizes a town - who remains a bully all of his life - and ultimately in this case went so far as to kill 3 people totally without cause, totally in cold blood.
BOB GARFIELD:So we discussed what the appeal of this kind of non-fiction is. Can you tell me what its utility is? Do you think that the accumulation of stories, many of them very heartbreaking and of course horrifying as well -- what's the benefit of reading them? Are they, are they humanizing?
OTTO PENZLER: I think in many cases we get to learn something about a killer or a major criminal of some kind. Occasionally we learn that circumstances pushed them into a situation; that there are in fact mitigating circumstances and we can find it in our hearts to forgive them. We also learn, I think, and it's very useful to know that there really is such a thing as evil behavior. I would go so far as to say that there are evil people. And I think it's important for us to remember that there are evil people and that there is evil in the world and that we should beware.
BOB GARFIELD: Well, Otto, thank you very much.
OTTO PENZLER: Thank you, Bob. It's a pleasure to be here.
BOB GARFIELD:Otto Penzler is co-editor of Best American Crime Writing. The 2003 edition has just been released. And he's also the owner of the Mysterious Book Shop in New York City. [THEME MUSIC]
BOB GARFIELD:That's it for this week's show. On the Media is produced by Katya Rogers, Janeen Price, Megan Ryan and Tony Field; engineered by Dylan Keefe, Jennifer Munson and George Edwards, and edited-- by Brooke. We had help from Dave Goldberg. Our webmaster is Amy Pearl.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Arun Rath is our senior producer and Dean Cappello our executive producer. Bassist/composer Ben Allison wrote our theme. You can listen to the program and get free transcripts at onthemedia.org and e-mail us at onthemedia@wnyc.org. This is On the Media from NPR. I'm Brooke Gladstone.
BOB GARFIELD: And I'm Bob Garfield.
- Back to story:
- September 19, 2003
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Conservative Bloggers Vindicated, Advice for Leakers, and More
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An 11-year-old and his 3D printer
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Who’s gonna pay for this stuff?
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A Journalistic Civil War Odyssey
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A Source for Sources
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OTM Staff Picks, Volume 52
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A New Incentive for Cord Cutters
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Brooke Gladstone + Cyndi Lauper
- Department of Justice Warrant Names Journalist as a Possible Leak Co-Conspirator
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The Totally Legal Subpoena
